Protest Trump’s Fake Mexican Wolf Recovery Plan

July 20, 2017 @ 3:30 pm - 9:00 pm

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The Trump administration has released a draft Mexican Wolf “Recovery” Plan, and it is bad news for the endangered wolves.

Mexican gray wolves number less than 120 in the wild, making them one of the most endangered mammals on Earth. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is charged with managing wolf recovery under the Endangered Species Act, has released a cynical, disingenuous plan that would suppress wolf numbers, sharply limit their distribution and hand over the rare wolves’ management to political appointees on state game commissions – undemocratic agencies full of representatives of industry and other special interests.

This isn’t a recovery plan – it’s a recovery sham.

Resist: Speak up for wolves

Fish and Wildlife is collecting public input at two upcoming meetings in New Mexico. This is your chance to speak out and resist.

Come early to prepare – there will be “wolf den” situation rooms set up near each location before the meetings to help you prepare your comments, answer questions about the plan and the process, and to connect with other wolf supporters, followed by a public rally. Free t-shirts will be given out, first come, first served.

Mexican wolves, or “lobos,” number fewer than 120 in the wild in the U.S. Southwest and Mexico, along with about 250 in captivity. The wolves in the wild in the U.S. suffer from close relatedness and dangerous inbreeding.

The Trump plan would allow politicized game departments to decide whether or not to release wolves from captivity, which scientists urgently recommend to ameliorate the inbreeding.

When states previously were in charge, from 2004 to 2008, they authorized widespread trapping and shooting of wolves and the wolf population plunged

This plan authorizes the suppression of wolf numbers for the next five years — until 2022 — which the states would gladly do again. Even worse, the wolves would be taken off the endangered species list and handed entirely to state control after there are just 320 in the wild in the U.S. and 170 in Mexico — but unconnected to each other, to accommodate a wall — and with no guarantee or even a likelihood of genetic viability for either population.

The restrictions in this plan would be enforced with traps, neck-snares and bullets and would doom the Mexican gray wolf to extinction.